If you are looking for a specific piece of information, you put in a pointed, specific query and Google will attempt to answer it and give you the result, without having to fish through the page results. It will also give you a link to where it found the answer. I've found it is hit and miss, but could definately be useful.

I'm not going to try to explain it all, but I am in awe - this is near a perfect implementation (at least of a v1.0) of a Google Maps application. It successfully uses the power of Maps, with its great interface and scalability, and the gigantic user base of CraigsList and syncs them to help in house and apartment searches. Be sure to click on houses/apts with pictures availbale, because thumbnails show up in the little balloon, and you can easily get to the actual craigslist listing. Unfortunately, the satellite images aren't integrated yet. I suppose it started on this project a long time before the introduced the satellite thing.

Here's some other Google Maps "projects", though nothing nearly on the scale as the Craigslist one -

This is a collection of satellite images that have been image-mapped so you get popup descriptions when you mouse over parts of the image. Looks to be mostly people talking about where they grew up and stuff, so not much of interest to the general public.http://flickr.com/groups/memorymaps/pool/

One thing that has been bothering me with Maps/Satellite, which has been brought out more with these recent spin-off projects, is that there is no distance scale indicator on the maps. This should be a trivial job for the Google guys - it should be a dynamically generated image that scales in real-time with the zoom slider. Especially now with the satellite images, a distance scale would be very helpful.

hmm, that's cool. Of course, you can just skip pressing "/" and just start typing the word you want to search, and FF will try to locate it immediately, assuming you have "begin finding text when you begin typing" checked under Options > Advanced > Accessibility.

For XHTML enables phones, you can now get driving directions and maps on your phone. Looks like you can get a mini Google Map with Google Local results, and you can navigate to the spots and click them to call, or to show directions.

I can't do that on my phone, but you can see what it looks like in a regular browser here - http://mobile.google.com/localThat page also works good if you want simple and fast driving directions with no map overlay

here we go - Google Video Upload has debuted - https://upload.video.google.com/This looks like a pre-cursor to the "Video Blogging Service" I alluded to earlier.

You can apply for an account and upload videos of "digital video files of any length and size". They will be searchable via metadata in the existing Google Video Search - http://video.google.com/

So, the terms of service say:

Quote :

" We accept any type of video content, with these restrictions:

* You must own all necessary rights to the content, including copyrights toboth the video and the audio. * You must be able to upload the video to us electronically. * The video must not contain pornographic or obscene material.

The content may be reviewed prior to being made available online. If we cannot use it, we'll let you know. "

This seems very un-google-like, and it's definately not a sustainable or scalable practice. I suspect that once it gets big, they'll have to move to an automated upload system. Maybe they can have some other ways to detect the content automatically.... i dunno.

At the least though, maybe this will be a good place to upload NCSU Football clips and the like?

hmmm, seems easy enough. I signed up (which was extremely easy since I have a Gmail account), downloaded a tiny "video uploader", then uploaded two of my wedding videos - one 43MB and one 1MB. I uploaded them, added some information (title, description, date, credits, URL, etc). They are being verified right now.

You can set purchase prices on them, or give them away for free, and restrict downloads per country. We'll see how long it takes to verify, then how the searching and downloading works....

there seems to be some Gmail early-adopters who are getting some RSS features showing up in their email.

The first is an RSS link to your inbox, so you can subscribe to your own inbox on your RSS reader, and it will show you your mail. My opinion - meh - I always keep Gmail and Bloglines open in two tabs anyway, so I would rather just go to Gmail to read my mail instead of Bloglines. This is also redundant if you use something like the Gmail Notifier. On the other hand - this is continuing a trend which has been absent from previous webmail services: Gmail is not forcing us to use gmail.com to read our mail. We can download with POP, read through and RSS reader, or forward all mail to another address. Obviously Google isn't making money off of ads when you use any of these methods, so I'm guessing they are hoping most people will still stick to the Gmail interface with the ads?http://www.blog.adion44.com/archives/2005/04/12/gmail-rss-for-new-posts/

Two - integrating RSS feeds into your gmail inbox. http://www.evhead.com/2005/04/gmail-adds-feed-reading.aspLooks like you get a one-liner RSS title above your inbox for RSS's you subscribe to, called a "Web-Clip". While again, I don't think I'd use this feature, I would love to see Gmail double as a full RSS reader. It would have an RSS link on the left below Inbox and the folder list, and you would get RSS feeds in similar fashion like your email - that would be hot

I can't tell if this is a recent change or not, but I just noticed it last week when I was using the Video Upload program.

On gmail.com when you sign in, the sign-in box says "Sign in to Gmail with your Google Account". Notice it says Google Account, not Gmail account, indicating Gmail is just one service you can access with your Google Account. So far, it looks like there are 3 services available through your Google Account:- Gmail - Froogle Shopping List- Video Upload Programin addition to things like "in your language", Groups, and Alerts.

This was all to be expected - I would expect to come is more personalization for searches and Maps and such. We will be able to save search settings to your account, and you should be able to save Local and Maps searches. Plus Google's recent accrediation by ICANN, you will be able to register and track your domain names in your Google Account.

What I'm dissapointed in so far is the main Accounts setting page. The services offered so are are very disjointed with no easy navigation among them or integration to each other. As far as I can tell, to get to the "Google Accounts" page from within Gmail, you have to go to Settings > Account Settings, then anohter window opens up where you can update your info. But even then if you click on "Google Video Upload Program", you just get some simple settings, with no link anywhere taking you to your Video Account - to get there you actually have to navigate to video.google.com and sign-into your "Google Account" again, even if you're already signed into Gmail. Again, I expect all this to change, and I expect to see a lot more coming from Google Accounts this year.

First, you have to install the GreaseMonkey FireFox extension - http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/That extension allows you to install DHTML user scripts to change the behavior of any webpage. Similar to using your own user defined CSS for a page, this allows you to create or install scripts that add functionality to pages.

So you install GreaseMonkey, then install the user script from the first link above. Then you go to Google Maps and look at Chicago (use the sample links provided). You will now see a "CTA Maps" link above the Google Map, right next to the "Satellite" link in the yellow bar. When you click that link you will see the "Chicago Transit Authority" map, showing all the bus, subway, etc routes. Most of the Google Maps functionality is maintained - you pan, get directions, show Local results, etc.

You can't zoom, however, and it only works on one zoom setting. This is because of how he implemented the user script to interact with his own server. He took the CTA map and sliced it up to match the Google Maps at a particular zoom level and used those slices for overlay. If one were so inclined, this could be much more robust, but it's very cool nonetheless.

I very much like where all this is going, though. By starting with a clean and easy to use Mapping system, Google has allowed others to build on the platform to offer things like satellite images, real estate listing and bus routes. The concept of a map is a very powerful idea, and with so many ways to display data on a map, I hope we'll see many more creative applications of Maps in the future.

BTW - looks like this is going to catch on pretty quickly. Here's a guy who's already done a version for Boston's transit maps - http://mojodna.net/?p=2

Google needs to really work on their address->lat/longitude conversion process. You type in NCSU and it chooses a point in East Raleigh. I placed all the icons you see by trial and error. There's got to be a better way.

well you could specify an intersection on campus, and that would pinpoint it for you. Or you could zoom/pan to NCSU, then double click on a location, which will center the map for you, then just click "Link to this page"

Yea, good point, I can center it with the real google maps and then dig through the page source code to get the lat/long/mapwidth, etc.

Check this out, from Google's API page:

Quote :

"Featured Project Link

Maps/Craigslist mashup

Like everyone else who has seen it, Paul Rademacher's mashup of Craigslist and Google Maps blew our minds right off our shoulders. While we have no official API for Maps yet, work like this really is amazing and deserves recognition. Good job Paul! "

Sounds like they don't really care and even encourage this, for the time being at least.

[Edited on April 20, 2005 at 3:21 PM. Reason : ps my web host is down. Has been all day. Too bad this site's not on progress-systems.]

well i may still be missing something, or over-simplifying what you're doing, but when you click "Link to this Page", isn't all the lat, long, and zoom info right there in the URL? Doesn't seem like you would need to go digging through any source code to find that.

But I agree, I am happy to see that Google is encouraging (or at least supporting) integrating Maps into other applications, and it sounds like they're going to release an API, so it should get much much easier.

"But the real jewels are the various Google Maps collections. This is a nice aggregation of views, and the Google Sightseeing blog might eventually be even better. This guy's marriage of Google Maps and Craig's List real estate ads had our engineers saying "Wow." Speaking of engineers, our own Nelson Minar came up with this visualization of where people did the most Maps searching on April 6th. And on the high art front, the Memory Mappers are creating nothing less than a new literary form. Cool."

alright - another big step in the "Google Accounts" arena, as I predicted on Monday.

When you're signed into your Google Account now - https://www.google.com/accounts/ - all your searches are saved, in addition to the results you click on. So when you're signed in, now on Google.com it has your sign-in name, Search History, My Account, and Sign-Out in the upper right corner. Click on Search History, and it will show you day by day your search activity and the results you clicked on. You can do further searches on your previous saves searches and results. This is great if you found searched for something a while ago and can't remember what it was (has happened to me LOTs of times), so you can just search your history. I've started using http://del.icio.us/joelion recently to keep track of all the pages I want to save, kind of as an online Bookmarks folder. I think I will continue to use it because I like the organization and sharing capabilies, but the Google Search History will alleviate the need to bookmark so many pages on del.icio.us

Now I'm sure the Google-Watch, privacy advocate people will be all over this (like stink on a monkey, as Kramer would say), but I'm, as you probably guessed, all for it. Once again, this is an opt in service. 1) you don't have to sign in to your account, so your searches won't be saved, 2) you can selectively remove, or remove all of your saved searches, and 3) you can "pause" the service at any time, so it stops collecting results.

Once again, though, i'm still not satisfied with the main "My Google Account" page. When you're not signed in and you go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ it lists all the available services in your Google Account - Alerts, Froogle Shopping List, Gmail, Groups, and Search History (I think the Video Upload program should be included there also). But when you sign in and you're on your "My Accounts" page, there is no link to get to your Gmail or your Search History. All you can do is edit your information for the various services, or delete information.

I bet in coming weeks we'll be seeing a LOT more services added to the Google Account. First off, I'd like to see Maps included, so you can save map locations and directions. Then I think "News" will be added, so the customizations to News that they added a month or so ago will be tied to your Account instead of a particular computer. And I'd like to see Picasa and Hello accounts and actvity included. good stuff!

oh yeah, i meant to say up ^^, but now that google has a sign-in link on Google.com, I think this officially makes them a Portal, although i'm sure they'll deny that and come up with some euphemism for what they are. (note, though, that the Sign-In link only appears on computers that have been used to sign into a Google Account previously. People who don't have Gmail or Google Alerts, etc, won't see the Sign-In link).

Also, now onthe Google Accounts sign-in page, there is a checkbox that says "Remember me on this computer". Before the My Search History, it was "keep me signed in for 2 weeks unless I sign off".

Remember GoogleX that I posted last month? It was a Google Labs page that emulated Mac OS X above the search bar, but it was taken off the Google page within 1 day of posting it (presumably under threat from Apple). Well a French website has managed to keep it live since then, although the actual seach doesn't seem to work... - http://ablaze.fr/GoogleX.htm

Another French site also has a page that uses Frames and puts a "Google Dock" at the bottom of the page. Since it uses Frames, you get all the regular and new Google features, but of course you lose your URL - http://mayeldb.online.fr/google/

And finally, a search conglomeration site that again uses the OS X genie effect, but it links up to a lot of popular search engines, and when you do a search with a particular engine, there is a floating bar at the top right that allows you to click on any other engine. pretty cool - http://www.queryster.com/searchx/

It looks to be a client side installation that speeds up web surfing by:

Quote :

"# Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.# Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.# Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.# Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.# Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.# Compressing data before sending it to your computer."

Once again, the privacy advocates will be all over this (notice, though, that is is of course, opt in), but even I am a bit weired out by it. I'm fine with all my Google searches being indexed by My Seach History, and I know that they can keep track of search activity with no problem, but this seems pretty invasive. When this is installed, ALL your page requests will go through Google - they will essentially act like a proxy to the rest of the internet. GAW will then analyze your surfing habits, and attempt to optimize your web-surfing based on past activity, such as pre-fetching pages you visit often, so they are served directly from Google. The Google servers will also compress pages so they download faster, and i'm assuming the GAW client will then intercept them, decompress, and send to the browser.

The privacy policy, of course, says everything is safe, they won't personally identify you, yada yada yada. But with the aggressive rollout of Google Accounts a couple weeks ago, I don't know if I believe this. It would be almost foolish of them not to associate the Google/Gmail account you are using with the GAW client you have installed. You can also turn off pre-fetching, clear your history, and exclude certain domains.

I will, of course, try this when I get home, but I don't know if it's something that I'll want to keep. I will have to see if it actually does speed up my connection (or at least the preception of speeding it up, that is). With yet another client side installation, Google is encroaching even further on MS's desktop dominance, and they are further trying to tie the desktop experience directly to your internet experience.

Even with Google performing x-billion searches a day, handing billions of emails though Gmail daily, if a significant number of people install and use GAW, this would open the flood gates for Google to collect so much data, that 1) advertisers would kill for, and 2) the government would be very happy to have. I predict that in the next year or two, we will see a federal court case against Google with the government attempting to collect information on a person/people based on info Google has stored on them. We will see then, how safe all our data is.

edit - here's some other commentary and initial results - http://tinyurl.com/7f8b7http://tinyurl.com/9m6hqthose kind of hit on the points I already mentioned. It does show, though, that for 31 pages tested, the total page load time went from 11.0 to 8.7 seconds using GAW (although the methodology used is completely missing)

I agree that the centralized storage of data is a risk, but if anyone can handle it responsibly, Google can. I think they're just finally letting their creative staff go hog wild and release anything that might be useful.

^ yeah, I know netzero, aol, netscape, all them have "web accelerators". I have not paid any attention to them, though, and know nothing about how they work. I have assumed they have been mostly client side tools, and I have questioned their effectiveness. What I can guess, though, is that they are nowhere near as reaching as the GWA. (someone please correct me if i'm wrong) With GWA, Google seems to be attempting to centralize the entire internet (ok, much of the internet, like public webpages) on their own servers, so they can serve it from there. They already have copies of almost everything on the internet on their servers where they get their cached versions from, but this seems to take it much further.

So backing this notion up - check this outhttp://google.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/05/05/much-controversy-over-googles-accelerator/Some guys are claiming that the GWA is serving them log ins to other people's accounts on the SomethingAwful.com forums. Everytime they refresh, they the GWA serves them a somethingAwful page from it's cache that was logged into as someone else who has GWA installed. If this is so, it could have some staggering implications, the least of which is that the Google QA department is doing an extremely shoddy job.

With web accelerators, the hosting company's servers read the original webpage, compresses it, then transmits it via dialup to the end user, where a client side program decompresses it. Even files that are already compressed, like JPEGs, will become slightly smaller, so your browsing experience speeds up by a small percentage.

^ well, no can do. They have shut down the WebAccelerator main page, although the server and service is still apparently up and running. They say they "have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support." yeah.... right. http://webaccelerator.google.com/

- Here's a tool that will create custom RSS feeds for you based on Google News Queries. That is, until Google shuts it down, i imagine. There's been lots of complaints as to what is taking Google so long in offering RSS to News. Yahoo does it. I think it probably has to do with the fact that the legality of Google News itself is still being questioned (hence, it's still in beta), so they have to wait for those court cases to settle uphttp://timyang.com/scrappygoo/

Despite the initial wave of interest, a Gartner analyst charged in an online research brief that Google's Web Accelerator is a waste of time, not a time-saver, for the group it's being aimed at: broadband users.

Google Inc. has suspended distribution of its Web Accelerator, saying the company has reached the maximum number of users for the beta software that's meant to speed up the time it takes to search the Internet.

The move occurred less than a week after the Mountain View, Calif., search giant launched the test.

"We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support," Google said Thursday in a posting on its website.

Web Accelerator, which was available at no charge, runs alongside a browser and directs all searches and page requests through Google's servers. To improve performance of broadband connections only, the application makes use of a cache, or data store, on the local computer, as well as caches on Google's servers, to store frequently accessed web pages.

But Google's Web Accelerator is a waste of time, not a time saver, for the group it's being targeted at, a research firm said Wednesday.

"Google's Web Accelerator will help speed searches via dial-up, but it is unnecessary for broadband users," wrote Gartner analyst Allen Weiner in an online research brief.

"Web accelerators were hot topics years ago, when many users were surfing the Web via dial-up connections. Today, with the popularity of broadband, an increasing number of users will not find a Web accelerator compelling," Weiner continued.

Google pitched its Web Accelerator to broadband users when it rolled out the free plug a week ago. Then, Google estimated that users could trim 2 to 3 hours from their online time if they surfed 20 to 30 hours a month.

Nor did Weiner see Google's Web Accelerator as something other large Web properties, such as MSN and Yahoo, would emulate. In fact, because "[Accelerator] cannot speed downloading of rich media files, such as large, network-clogging music and video files," Weiner noted that the caching techniques that Google uses will be made obsolete by the closed peer-to-peer networks based on instant messaging that AOL, MSN, and Yahoo are building.

Web Accelerator has come under criticism from privacy advocates for caching users' pages on its servers; there have also been scattered reports of some users accessing others' pages. Google spokespeople have denied that the download halt was due to any security or privacy concerns.

Under Google's privacy policies, the company does not track an individual's web activity, but does collect aggregated data from people using its services. The company has said that data collected from Web Accelerator won't be used in Google's advertising services for now. The company, however, could decide to use it later. "

"When Dodgeball users "check in" at a given locale by sending out a text message, it goes to all their preselected friends, as well as any friends of friends within a ten-block radius. A photo is sent along with the alert-which helps with identifying near strangers. Introductions are made, beer is poured, and then hookups can occur-casually, and in a low-pressure environment, all under the guise of knowing someone in common. It's Friendster, except in real time and in the real world."

Quote :

"Dating on the fly - You're walking around town when a text message pops up on your phone, along with a photo of a rather attractive stranger. The prospective companion is nearby and would love to meet for a drink. Seem far-fetched? Members of Dodgeball.com can choose up to five "crushes" online and receive alerts when they're within 10 blocks of their location. The free "opt-in" service is available in 22 cities; Dodgeballers sign in by telling the company their location."

Quote :

"If you're on the road and looking to hook up with some friends, use Dodgeball.com and your mobile phone to broadcast your whereabouts to your buddies. Send a text message to the site stating your location, and in no time all the pals on your Dodgeball.com network will get the message (you can also send them a photo, if your phone has a built-in camera). They'll find out what you're up to--and where they can join you. And if a friend of one of your friends is within ten blocks, they'll get a message as well."

I don't use it since I use FireFox, but one cool thing is that if you go to the above link in FF, they encourage you to go to the Googlebar FF plugin page.

Here's more info about the Toolbar, and of greater interest, some quotes from the Google "product cheif" on the meaning of beta, and the different types of beta (client vs. webapp), no doubt in response to 1) the ever expanding list of perpetual beta Google products, and 2) the GWA fiasco.http://battellemedia.com/archives/001269.php

"Microsoft released the finalized version of its desktop search tool, taking aim at Google and other rivals in the increasingly competitive search market.

The MSN Toolbar Suite, which was introduced on a trial basis five months ago, combines several programs that speed up your search tasks and help you surf the Web. MSN Search Toolbar includes Windows Desktop Search, so you can find anything on your PC - documents, e-mail messages, and more - in seconds. Using add-ins, users can search more than 200 different file types, including Excel, PowerPoint, MP3, GIF and JPG files. And three handy toolbars make it easy to search the Web or your PC, block annoying pop-up windows, automatically fill out web forms, and more.

MSN, Google and Yahoo desktop toolbars are free downloads. They are aimed at attracting users to their online services. "